human’s eyes were glowing red.
CHAPTER SIX
Washington D.C. – USA
Barb tilted her chair back and leaned her head against the headrest. Then, she leaned back further and stared up at the ceiling as she twirled in the chair, causing the ceiling to go round-and-round.
That lasted about three turns before she closed her eyes, “Good going, Barbie girl, you just successfully made yourself nauseous!”
It was a nice Saturday afternoon outside and Barb was stuck.
She was pretty far down the rabbit trail on the report. She couldn’t completely pin down the group, but enough smoking trails were there to lead her to this new TQB Enterprises.
When she looked into the taxes and roster, it was pretty damning. They had a retired General as the Company Operations Officer and a group of black-ops guys had disappeared into the mix. Not to mention a fuck-ton of ex-Navy people were floating around the Mediterranean Sea during the time of the Turkey operation. To top it all off they had purchased or, at minimum, indefinitely leased a major army base in Colorado that had just conveniently been decommissioned.
Why the hell hadn’t anyone else pulled this information together?
The companies under the umbrella were old. Some of them centuries old and some as recent as a couple of years ago. The elusive head of the company had real estate down in the Miami area but she hadn’t been seen there recently.
Barb had tried to track credit card receipts, but they didn’t make sense. She might have purchased something in Miami for lunch and then in France at night with no method of travel that Barb could tell.
She had been able to confirm that the company had private jets, but she had tracked the flight plans. Occasionally they matched up, but frequently they didn’t.
It was pissing her off. It was like she was missing pieces of the puzzle and couldn’t put it all together.
But that wasn’t the worst aspect. The part that really concerned her was ‘who’ she was doing this research for. There were plenty of potential clues, but they kept pointing to a non-entity. The kind of non-entity you would use if your group was black and deniable.
The kind of group that might get rid of any pointer back to them.
Sydney, Australia
Samuel snapped in irritation, “Gabrielle, there is no way that…” He stopped talking when he felt the gun barrel touching his skull. Samuel noticed that Richard’s eyes were wide open across the little table.
The human bent down next to Samuel and hissed into his ear, “Please give me an excuse to blow your fucking brains all over the place. The humans here would get money and might receive memory modification. I, on the other hand, would have the pleasure of ending your useless ass. The next words out of your mouth better respect Gabrielle or I’ll personally take you out and kick your ass.”
Samuel looked at Gabrielle but she just shrugged and pulled out a small knife to clean her beautifully manicured nails.
Samuel never saw Richard’s minute head shake.
“What the hell,” Samuel hissed, “I’ll go for door number two but I get to suck on your neck when I win this fight you disrespecting ass. I’m not Nosferatu and there is a world of difference as I’ll show you.”
“Then you had better bring your ‘A’ game, old-timer.” Scott said.
“So boys,” Gabrielle said putting up he knife, “Now that you have both enjoyed your ritual dick-beating, I have questions.”
“No.” Samuel replied, “You said that this irresponsible idiot could break my back over his knee. You don’t get an answer until he proves he should even be allowed to talk at the adults table.”
She shrugged, “Well, once your ass whipping is complete, we will finish this conversation. Come with me.”
Scott stood back to give them room to get up. They started following Gabrielle. Samuel turned his head and said in a very